National Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Consultant

Timeframe: September to November

Interpeace

Interpeace is an international peacebuilding organisation that strengthens the ability of societies to manage conflict themselves in sustainable and non-violent ways. Interpeace designs and delivers its work tailored to each situation in partnership with local partners and communities, based on extensive consultation and research. Interpeace also ensures that the processes of conflict management and change that it supports are integrated at all levels of society including local communities, civil society, government, and the international community (we call it a ‘Track 6’ approach). Beyond field-based peacebuilding, Interpeace also assists the international community – particularly the UN – to be more effective in supporting peacebuilding efforts worldwide. This includes contributing innovative thought leadership on peacebuilding policies and practices.

Interpeace is headquartered in Geneva and has offices around the world. For more information about Interpeace, please visit www.interpeace.org

Background

The Reweaving Social Fabric- Libya project is funded by the Government of the Netherlands and is a pilot project to explore possible innovative approaches to reconciliation in Libya, including those related to mental health and psycho-social support (MHPSS), taking bottom-up processes as a starting point. The goal is to identify local reconciliation priorities in Libya and understand the way they relate to mental wellbeing and community resilience. The project aims to enable reconciliation whilst applying non-violent conflict-resolution techniques to resolve conflicts and address grievances at the community level.

Service or Assignment Description and Objective(s)

Interpeace is seeking an MHPSS expert to plan, facilitate and deliver culturally and age-appropriate multi-stakeholder needs assessment consultations in the East, West and South of Libya. The objective of the consultations is a needs assessment that integrates both peacebuilding, mental health and livelihoods considerations to understand how a mental health infrastructure should be deployed to serve a population’s needs. The insights shall provide a trauma informed, conflict-sensitive and locally situated analysis to inform design of contextually tailored approaches for improving mental well-being, social cohesion and economic development that build upon existing knowledge, practices, capacities, and infrastructures.

The consultant shall be comfortable working with multiple stakeholders across institutional siloes and encourage the evolution of MHPSS technical know-how of the team. The consultant will work with the Interpeace team and project participants to design and deliver culturally acceptable and trauma-informed activities focusing on psycho-social support and mental health wellbeing. The consultant will become familiar with Interpeace’s emerging framework for the integration of Mental Health and Peacebuilding, and develop practical recommendations on how it can be utilized to assess needs in Libya.

Activities, Deliverables and Timeframe

The project is expected to be conducted part-time for a period of 3-5 months over a length of 30 working days. The consultant will be expected to travel to the East, West and South of Libya.

Scope of work

This assignment entails:

• Provide technical guidance on design of consultations, to include adaptations over time that materialize inclusivity and mobilize meaningful participation toward a needs assessment that integrates mental health and peacebuilding considerations
• Prepare and deliver skill-building modules and participate in planning (in-person where possible)
• Co-facilitate consultations in communities
• Support the partner team to engage with existing actor networks, including Interpeace change agents
• Collaborate with Interpeace team in output production around mental health and peacebuilding needs

The indicative timeline is as follows:

Deliverables

Inception meeting; Planning and design workshop

14-16 September

5 days

Facilitation of multi-stakeholder consultations in the East, West, and South of Libya

September and October

10 days

Analysis and reporting, programme design workshop

October and November

4 days

Internal programme design workshop

November

3 days

Drafting of lessons-learned brief on trauma-informed reconciliation practices

November and December

4 days

Skill building modules

Ad-hoc

4 days

Qualifications

The consultant is expected to have the following qualifications:

• Education and/or professional experience in an MHPSS-related field (e.g., psychology, psychiatry, social work)
• Deep knowledge of the Libyan context
• Experience in dialogue processes/facilitation and/or qualitative field research
• Cross-sectoral experience (e.g. across health, education, peacebuilding) is an advantage
• Prior experience in designing mental health programmes and policies is an advantage
• Experience advising and accompanying national and international peacebuilding organisations operating in conflict-affected contexts
• Experience in facilitation and/or conducting training or workshops to different stakeholder groups
• Experience working with multi-mandated agencies is an asset
• Professional fluency in Arabic and English